SAP releases TM update early

   SAP on Wednesday released version 9.0 version of its SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) application.
   The release came more than a month earlier than first planned, the global software company said.
   SAP said the benefits of the new release include improved ocean and new air freight management, manual and automated transportation planning, cost distribution, and additional transportation management analytics and reports.
   “SAP TM has been extended to cover air freight management for freight forwarders, with specific capabilities for air freight order, capacity, cargo and gateway management,” the company said. “Other enhancements specific for freight forwarder companies include comprehensive forwarding order and service product management. Updates for ocean freight, manual and automated freight planning, and reporting support both shipper and freight forwarder industries.”
   SAP said it’s seeing increased demand for comprehensive transportation management solutions, particularly in high-growth markets such as Latin America, Asia Pacific and Russia.
   “The early availability of SAP TM 9.0 provides us with highly anticipated freight planning capabilities,” said John Ansley , chief information officer for Australia-based logistics service provider Linfox. “We are now able to efficiently plan our road trains, leading to better asset usage, for example, cost cutting, and improved customer service through on-time delivery.”
   SAP TM is part of the portfolio of SAP solutions for supply chain management, which also includes SAP EWM and SAP Event Management. The offerings are integrated in a single platform but available as independent solutions.
   Meanwhile, SAP announced last week that it plans to acquire SmartOps, a provider of inventory and service-level optimization software solutions. The acquisition paves the way for SAP to develop what it calls “real-time supply chain” software solutions. SmartOps is a long-term partner of SAP and has developed algorithms that use predictive analytics to help manage global distribution networks and vast, multi-stage supply chains.
   SAP said the acquisition will help leverage its new HANA in-memory database capability, which it unveiled in January. – Eric Johnson